THE FUNERAL SHIP AND ITS DEAD.
116 Buried at Sea--Nearly All Sailors--No Prominent Men Buried--No
Bullet Wounds Found--Halifax’s Bells Toll For Dead--Astor’s Body
Identified--Death Ship’s Voyage--The Captain’s Story--Canon Hind’s
Narrative.
The cable ship Mackay-Bennett which had been sent out to recover
as many as possible of the Titanic’s dead, reached her pier in the
dockyard at Halifax, Nova Scotia, the nearest port, at 9.30 on the
morning of April 30, almost exactly two weeks after the disaster.
Down the gangway to the pier in the sunlight of a perfect April day
they carried 190 of those who had started forth on the maiden voyage of
the biggest ship afloat.
In her quest the Mackay-Bennett had found 306 of the Titanic’s dead,
but only 190 were brought to shore. The rest, the 116, were buried at
sea. And 57 of those 116 were among the identified dead.
Of those who were brought to shore, 60 lay unnamed at the curling rink
on the edge of the town. It was believed that the 60 were all members
of the Titanic’s crew, but the slender hope that their own dead might
be among them sent many to the rink.
One of the sixty was a little baby girl. Five of them were women, but
none of the women that were found were from the first cabin passengers.
There was no hope that the body of Mrs. Straus was among them. There
was practically no hope that Major Butt was among the unnamed sixty.
The quest of the Mackay-Bennett bore greater results than were
anticipated, and Capt. Lardner believed that his ship recovered about
all of those who did not go down in the Titanic.
The search was continued over five days, sometimes with the ship
drifting without success amid miles and miles of wreckage, tables,
chairs, doors, pillows, scattered fragments of the luxury that was the
White Star liner Titanic.
At other times the bodies were found close together, and once they
saw more than a hundred that looked to the wondering crew of the
Mackay-Bennett like a flock of sea gulls in the fog, so strangely did
the ends of the life belts rise and fall with the rise and fall of the
waves.
Those whose dead the Mackay-Bennett brought to shore came forward with
their claims, and from the middle of the afternoon the rest of the day
was filled with the steps of identification and the signing of many
papers.
The first to be claimed was John Jacob Astor and for his death was
issued the first “accidental drowning” death certificate of the
hundreds who lost their lives in the wreck of the Titanic.
Vincent Astor and Nicholas Biddle started for New York with the body
the next night.
THE BODY OF ISADORE STRAUS IDENTIFIED.
The second identified was Isidor Straus. The start for New York was
made early the next morning. Three went on the same night. These were
George E. Graham, Milton C. Long, and C. C. Jones. Lawrence Millett has
identified his father.
Friends quickly took charge of the bodies of E. H. Kent, W. D.
Douglass, Timothy McCarty, George Rosenshine, E. C. Ostby, E. G.
Crosby, William C. Porter, A. O. Holverson, Emil Brandies, Thomas
McCafferty, Wykoff Vanderhoef, and A. S. Nicholson.
Sharp and distinct in all the tidings the Mackay-Bennett brought to
shore the fact stands out that fifty-seven of those who were identified
on board were recommitted to the sea. Of the 190 identified dead that
were recovered from the scene of the Titanic wreck only 130 were
brought to Halifax.
This news, which was given out almost immediately after the death ship
reached her pier, was a confirmation of the suspicion that in the last
few days had seized upon the colony of those waiting here to claim
their dead.
Yet it came as a deep, a stirring surprise. It stunned the White Star
men who have had to direct the work from Halifax.
They had been confidently posting the names of the recovered as the
wireless brought the news in from the Atlantic. When the suspicion
arose that some of the identified might have been buried at sea the
White Star people said that they did not know, but they were working
on the assumption that Capt. Lardner would bring them all to port, and
that only the unidentifiable had been recommitted to the sea.
THE UNNAMED DEAD.
Then they learned that the Mackay-Bennett had brought in sixty
unidentified. The hallway of the curling rink where the dead were
removed from the cable ship was thronged all afternoon with friends and
relatives eager beyond expression to see those unnamed dead, but the
attention of the embalmers was turned to those already identified, for
whom the claimants were waiting. For the most part the unidentified
could not be viewed until the next morning.
One of them was thought to be Arthur White, a member of the Titanic’s
crew.
The suspense was acute. Yet those who were most anxious for the morrow
to come knew that hope was of the slenderest. They knew that the
nameless sixty were almost all members of the crew. Capt. Lardner said
that he was sure of it. He knew it by the clothes they wore.
As to the fifty-seven identified dead that were buried at sea, the
whole colony was stirred by pity that it had to be, and not a few
wonder if it really had to be, a wonder fed by the talk of some of the
embalmers. Yet few were immediately concerned, most of those in Halifax
were waiting for men who sailed first cabin of the Titanic. It appears
that only one of these was among the ones who were buried at sea. This
was Frederick Sutton, of Philadelphia. The large majority were either
members of the Titanic’s crew or steerage passengers.
Of the 116 that Capt. Lardner thought best to return to the sea,
he explained that the unidentified seemed unidentifiable, that the
identified were too mutilated to bring to shore.
“Let me say first of all,” he announced when the reporters gathered
around him, “that I was commissioned to bring aboard all the bodies
found floating, but owing to the unanticipated number of bodies found,
owing to the bad weather and other conditions it was impossible to
carry out instructions, so some were committed to the deep after
service, conducted by Canon Hind.”
Capt. Lardner explained that neither he nor any of his people had
dreamed that so many of the Titanic’s dead would be found floating on
the surface of the Atlantic.
ONLY 106 BODIES PRESERVED.
It was more than his embalmer could handle, for, although the material
for embalming seventy bodies, which was all that Halifax sent out with
the Mackay-Bennett, was supplemented at sea by materials borrowed from
the Minia, the number of dead so preserved for the return to shore was
only 106.
He did not know how long he would have to stay at his grim work on the
scene of the wreck. He did not know how long bad weather would impede
the homeward voyage.
He did not know how long he could safely carry the multitude of dead.
It seemed best to recommit some to the sea, and so on three different
days 116 were weighted down and dropped over the edge of the ship into
the Atlantic.
Then rose the question as to why some were picked for burial at sea
and others left on board to be brought home to the waiting families on
shore. The reporters put the question to the Captain, and he answered
it:
“No prominent man was recommitted to the deep. It seemed best to embalm
as quickly as possible in those cases where large property might be
involved. It seemed best to be sure to bring back to land the dead
where the death might give rise to such questions as large insurance
and inheritance and all the litigation.
“Most of those who were buried out there were members of the Titanic’s
crew. The man who lives by the sea ought to be satisfied to be buried
at sea. I think it is the best place. For my own part I should be
contented to be committed to the deep.”
To emphasize the uncertainty of the task he directed, Capt. Lardner
pointed silently to the forward hold, where an hour before those on the
pier had seen the dead lying side by side on the floor, each in the
wrapping of tarpaulin.
“They were ready for burial,” the Captain said. “We had the weights in
them, for we didn’t know when we should have to give them up.”
A FEW MORE BODIES RECOVERED.
To those who hoped to find their own among the unidentified in the
curling ring to-morrow Capt. Lardner held out little encouragement
except the prospect that the quest of the Minia may result in a few
more bodies being recovered. He believed that his own ship gathered in
most of those who were kept afloat by the lifebelts.
Almost all of the rest, in his opinion, went down with the rush of
waters that closed over the Titanic, driving them down in the hatchways
and holding the dead imprisoned in the great wreck.
Survivors told of many pistol shots heard in those dark moments when
the last lifeboats were putting off, and though the pier on the night
the Carpathia landed was astir with rumors of men shot down as they
fought to save their lives, not one of the bodies that were recovered
yesterday had any pistol shots, according to Capt. Lardner and the
members of his crew.
The mutilations which marked so many were broken arms and legs and
crushed skulls, where the living on the Titanic were swept against the
stanchions by the onrush of the sea.
The little repair shop on the Mackay-Bennett was a treasure house when
she came to port. Fifteen thousand dollars in money was found on the
recovered bodies and jewelry that will be worth a king’s ransom. One
of the crew related his experience with one dead man whose pockets he
turned inside out only to have seventeen diamonds roll out in every
direction upon the littered deck.
It was a little after 9.30 that the Mackay-Bennett was sighted by those
waiting for her since the break of day. For it was in the chill of 6
o’clock on a Canadian Spring morning that the people began to assemble
on the pier in the dockyard.
They were undertakers for the most part, mingling with the newspaper
men who hurried to and fro between the water’s edge and the little bell
tent set up a few yards back to guard the wires that were to flash the
news to the ends of the continent.
WATCH FOR MEN WITH CAMERAS.
The dockyard was patrolled by twenty members of the crew and four
petty officers from H. M. C. S. Niobe and by a squad of men from the
Dominion police, who were instructed to keep out all without passes
countersigned by the commandant, and who were particularly vigilant in
the watch for men with cameras.
Just as the death ship reached her pier, and in the midst of the eager
movement forward to learn what news she brought from the scene of
the Titanic’s wreck, a little tug was spotted near by, and Commander
Martin, in charge of the dockyard, scented a moving picture man.
In a very few moments he was putting out for the tug in the little
patrol launch. Again a few moments and he was standing on the pier with
a complacent smile on his face.
“I have the films,” he said in explanation, so the privacy was guarded.
The friends and relatives of those who were lost when the great
liner went down were urged not to assume the ordeal of meeting the
Mackay-Bennett. Almost without exception they followed this advice, and
only a scattering few could be seen among those waiting on the pier.
In all the crowd of men, officials, undertakers, and newspaper men,
there was just one woman, solitary, spare, clasping her heavy black
shawl tightly around her.
This was Eliza Lurette, for more than thirty years in the service
of Mrs. William August Spencer, who was waiting at her home on East
Eighty-sixth Street, New York, while Miss Lurette had journeyed to
Halifax to seek the body of Mr. Spencer, who went down with the Titanic.
So the crowd that waited on the pier was made up almost entirely of men
who had impersonal business there, and the air was full of the chatter
of conjecture and preparation.
Then, warned by the tolling of the bells up in the town, a hush fell
upon the waiting people. The gray clouds that had overcast the sky
parted, and the sun shone brilliantly on the rippling water of the
harbor as the Mackay-Bennett drew alongside her pier.
THE DEAD LAY EVERYWHERE.
Capt. Lardner could be seen upon the bridge. The crew hung over the
sides, joyously alive and glad to be home. But in every part of the
ship the dead lay. High on the poop deck coffins and rough shells were
piled and piled.
Dead men in tarpaulins lined the flooring of the cable-wells both fore
and aft, so that there was hardly room for a foot to be put down. And
in the forward hold dead men were piled one upon another, their eyes
closed as in sleep, and over them all a great tarpaulin was stretched.
Those that pressed forward to see were sickened and turned back.
The business of moment was to discharge that freight, and this was done
with all possible dispatch.
The uncoffined dead were carried down in stretchers, placed in the
rough shells that were piled upon the pier, and one by one driven up
the slope and into the town in the long line of hearses and black
undertaker’s wagons that had been gathered from every quarter. It was
speedily done, but quietly and without irreverent haste.
For two hours this business proceeded before anyone could go upon the
pier and the sounds were like the hum of a small factory. There were
the muffled orders, the shuffling and tramping of feet, the scraping
as of packing boxes drawn across the rough flooring and the eternal
hammering that echoed all along the coal sheds.
Two hours it was before any one could go on board, and then came
another hour when the coffins were swung down from the deck and piled
up on the wharf ready for the removal that took until well into the
middle of the afternoon.
Few of the relatives were allowed to pass beyond the cordon that
stretched all about the pier at which the dead were landed.
One of the first to get through the lines and the first of all the
waiting crowd to make his way aboard after the ship reached her pier
was Capt. Richard Roberts, of the Astor yacht, who was filled with a
great concern at the news that had come from the Widener party.
NOT MR. WIDENER.
For long before the Mackay-Bennett reached her pier it was established
as definitely as it may ever be established that the man who was
picked up at sea for George D. Widener was not Mr. Widener, but his
man-servant Edward Keating.
Although the name was sent in by wireless, a later examination of the
dead man’s clothing and effects proved that it was Keating’s body. A
letter in the pocket was addressed to Widener, but the coat was labeled
“E. K.” and the garments were of an inferior quality. Identification
by features was out of the question, for the dead man had been struck
by some spar or bit of wreckage, and the face was mutilated past
recognition. He was buried at sea, and the news sent on to the waiting
family.
Young Mr. Widener, who had been waiting here for a week with a private
car to carry the body of his father home to Philadelphia, had heard of
the uncertainty, and in a fever of impatience he met the Mackay-Bennett
at Quarantine, went over the effects with Captain Lardner, and was
satisfied that it was Keating whose body was found and who was later
committed to the deep.
The haunting fear that this same error might have been made in the
case of Colonel Astor had possession of the whole Astor party and grew
acute as the Widener story went out. That was what sent Captain Roberts
hurrying to the ship. He was admitted and saw for himself. The coffin
top was removed on board.
The plain gold ring with the two little diamonds set deep, the gold
buckle on the belt that Colonel Astor always wore, and a sum amounting
to nearly $3000 in the pockets settled the uncertainty. Twenty minutes
after he had boarded the ship Captain Roberts was hurrying through the
crowd to reach the nearest telephone that he might speed the news to
waiting Vincent Astor.
QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY.
Beyond these two cases the questions of identity were taken up at the
Mayflower Curling Rink at the edge of the town, where the line of
hearses had been trundling since the Mackay-Bennett landed. As they
passed the crowds were hushed, men bowed their heads, and officers
saluted.
At the rink the great main floor was given over to the coffins and
shells containing the identified dead, and as soon as the embalmers
had done their work the friends and relatives came forward and claimed
their own.
Upstairs in the large, bare room the packets of clothing were
distributed in rows upon the floor.
There the oak chests of the Provincial Cashier were opened for the
sorting of the canvas bags that contained the valuables, the letters
and the identifying trinkets of the dead. It was all very systematic.
It was all very much businesslike, and while a lunch counter served
refreshments to the weary workers, and while the Intercolonial set up a
desk for railway tickets, the Medical Examiner was busy issuing death
certificates, and the Registrar was issuing burial permits, all to the
accompanying click, click of several typewriters.
A satisfactory arrangement was reached as to the disposition of the
personal effects. A man would claim his dead, take the number, make his
way to the representatives of the Provincial Secretary, and there claim
the contents of the little canvas bag by making affidavit that he was
the duly authorized representative of the executor or next of kin.
The little crimson tickets that are the death certificates were printed
for the tragedies of every day in the year. Their formal points and
dimensions seemed hopelessly inadequate for even the briefest statement
of the tragedy of the Titanic.
CERTIFICATE FOR THE DEAD.
The first body claimed and removed from the rink was that of John Jacob
Astor. The certificate, the first issued for one of the Titanic dead,
reads:
Name of deceased--John Jacob Astor. Sex--M. Age--47. Date of
death--April 15, 1912. Residence, street, etc.--840 Fifth Av. N. Y.
C. Occupation--Gentleman. Married. Cause--Accidental drowning. S. S.
Titanic at sea. Length of illness--Suddenly. Name of physician in
attendance.
Such details as these filled the day.
After the greater part of the Titanic’s dead had been shifted from the
Mackay-Bennett to the pier, Captain Lardner descended to the dining
saloon, and with the reporters from all over the country gathered
around the table, he opened the ship’s log and, slowly tracing his
fingers over the terse entries, he told them the story of the death
ship’s voyage.
Lardner is English by birth and accent, and tall and square of build,
with a full brown beard and eyes of unusual keenness.
“We left Halifax,” he began, “shortly after noon on Wednesday, April
17, but fog and bad weather delayed us on the run out, and we did not
get there till Saturday night at 8 o’clock.
“We asked all ships to report to us if they passed any wreckage or
bodies, and on Saturday at noon we received a communication from the
German mailboat steamship Rhein to the effect that in latitude 42.1.
N. longitude 49.13, she had passed wreckage and bodies.
“The course was shaped for that position. Later in the afternoon we
spoke to the German steamship Bremen, and they reported having passed
three large icebergs and some bodies in 42 N. 49.20 W.
“We arrived on the scene at 8 o’clock Saturday evening, and then we
stopped and let the ship drift. It was in the middle of the watch that
some of the wreckage and a few bodies were sighted.
“At daylight the boats were lowered, and though there was a heavy sea
running at the time, fifty-one bodies were recovered.”
The Rev. Canon K. C. Hinds, rector of All Saints’ Cathedral, who
officiated at the burial of 116 bodies, the greatest number consigned
to the ocean at one time, tells the story of the Mackay-Bennett’s trip
as follows:
OUR JOURNEY SLOW.
We left Halifax shortly after noon on April 17, and had not proceeded
far when fog set in so that our journey was slow. We reached the
vicinity of the wreckage on Saturday evening. Early on Sunday morning
the search for bodies began, when the captain and other officers of the
ship kept a lookout from the bridge.
Soon the command was given “Stand by the boat!” and a little later the
lifeboat was lowered and the work begun of picking up the bodies as
they were pointed out in the water to the crew.
Through the day some fifty were picked up. All were carefully examined
and their effects placed in separate bags, all bodies and bags being
numbered.
It was deemed wise that some of them should be buried. At 8 P. M.
the ship’s bell was tolled to indicate all was in readiness for the
service. Standing on the bow of the ship as she rocked to and fro, one
gazed at the starry heavens and across the boundless deep, and to his
mind the psalmist’s words came with mighty force:
“Whither shall I go then from Thy spirit, or whither shall I go then
from Thy presence? If I ascend up to heaven Thou art there, I make
my bed in the grave, Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the
morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there shall
Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.”
In the solemn stillness of the early night, the words of that unequaled
burial office rang across the waters: “I am the resurrection and the
life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in Me shall never die.”
When the time of committal came these words were used over each body:
COMMIT HIS BODY TO THE DEEP.
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take up to Himself the
soul of our dear brother departed, we, therefore, commit his body to
the deep to be turned to corruption, looking for the resurrection of
the body (when the seas shall give up her dead) and the life of the
world to come, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, who shall change our vile
body, that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the
mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.”
The prayers from the burial service were said, the hymn “Jesus, Lover
of My Soul,” sung and the blessing given.
Any one attending a burial at sea will most surely lose the common
impression of the awfulness of a grave in the mighty deep. The wild
Atlantic may rage and toss, the shipwrecked mariners cry for mercy, but
far below in the calm untroubled depth they rest in peace.
On Monday the work began again early in the morning, and another day
was spent in searching and picking up the floating bodies and at night
a number were buried. On Tuesday the work was still the same until the
afternoon, when the fog set in, and continued all day Wednesday.
Wednesday was partly spent in examining bodies, and at noon a number
were committed to the deep. Thursday came in fine and from early
morning until evening the work went on.
During the day word came that the cable ship Minia was on her way to
help and would be near us at midnight.
“Early on Friday some more bodies were picked up. The captain then
felt we had covered the ground fairly well and decided to start on our
homeward way at noon. After receiving some supplies from the Minia we
bid good-bye and proceeded on our way.
“The Mackay-Bennett succeeded in finding 306 bodies, of which 116 were
buried at sea, and one could not help feeling, as we steamed homeward,
that of those bodies we had on board it would be well if the greater
number of them were resting in the deep.
“It is to be noted how earnestly and reverently all the work was done
and how nobly the crew acquitted themselves during a work of several
days which meant a hard and trying strain on mind and body.
“What seems a very regrettable fact is that in chartering the
Mackay-Bennett for this work the White Star Company did not send an
official agent to accompany the steamer in her search for the bodies.